A new European data center firm has launched with two facilities in Norway.
This week saw the official launch of Polar, which bills itself as a developer of the “next generation of data centers to facilitate the latest developments in HPC and AI workloads.”
The company is owned by the same investor as Cowa, a cryptomining firm, and has many of the same employees, including Polar's head of mining, who is the head of business operations, and a project manager at Cowa that also a project manager at Polar. However, the company told DCD in a statement that they are separate, standalone businesses.
On its website, Polar says it has two AI-ready data centers available for customer deployment.
DRA01, located on a 60,000 sqm plot in southeast Norway, reportedly has 12MW of IT load immediately available, with another 36MW in development. Polar said the site uses free cooling, with rear door heat exchangers or direct liquid cooling options for HPC.
DAL01, located on a 19,000 sqm plot 35km outside Bergen, reportedly has 20MW available with another 45MW in development. The site is said to be an existing industrial building previously used for manufacturing, and described as ready for fit-out for client needs. Polar said the site will use river cooling.
Polar is led by CEO Andy Hayes, who was previously CTO at hyperscale developer Yondr.
“Polar is accelerating infrastructure by developing a unique, technology-led, data center platform that can meet the growing, diverse needs of our global customers,” Hayes said.
Hayes was at Yondr from 2019 until 2022, before that, he was at UK construction firm ISG and Keysource.
In a post on LinkedIn, Hayes said his team "is already growing and showing a great passion for collaboration and innovation."
He added: "With a number of data center developments already underway I feel very excited to be leading the business."
The company was founded by Fiorenzo Manganiello and Nessim-Sariel Gaon, who co-founded and led Lian Group, a technology investment company with more than $400m of capital deployed. Founded in 2017, Lian says its institutional clients include family offices, private banks, and UHNWI.
Lian has previously invested in crypto firm Bitfury, while Manganiello and Gaon are also founders of Cowa, a European blockchain firm.
Previous reports suggest Cowa operated at least one data center in Norway, and the company’s ‘data center’ page on its website redirects to Polar’s website. Update: The company told DCD this was an error.
Cowa operates or previously operated a 40MW cryptomine site at a former ironworks plant in Mo i Rana, in northern Norway. Previous reports suggest it was launched by Bitfury in 2018.
Update: Polar told DCD it acquired powered land from Lian Group, not Cowa.
